A new bill currently being discussed in Congress aims to address aeroplane safety concerns brought about by cramped economy and budget airline seats.
Travel can bring a wide and colourful range of unforeseen difficulties — from a man urinating all over business class to a disgusting sock-stuffed seat, from a woman being publicly weighed in the airport to a hostess being beaten with an in-flight phone — but sometimes it’s the most mundane difficulties that actually cause the most discomfort, not to mention the most danger. Cramped economy seats are a prime example of such a phenomenon, and it seems people are so fed up with feeling like sardines that American lawmakers have decided to take action.
A new bill currently being discussed in Congress hopes to address the all too often ignored safety concerns that come with crowded seat conditions, particularly for people with disabilities or other physical restrictions that could impede their ability to evacuate at speed in the unlikely but nevertheless very possible event of an emergency, as reported by Business Insider.
WATCH: The viral ‘double-decker’ plane seats may never make it onto US planes.
As travel rates gradually recover to pre-pandemic levels, airlines are seeking ways to make up for lost profits and accommodate more passengers, leading to creative but crowded suggestions as to how they can squeeze more people onto planes, with the now infamous “double-decker” seats being a prime example. However, while this might light up the eyes of airline shareholders, it seems passengers are far less happy with the current state of play…
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) surveyed the public to see if they felt that seat sizes pose safety risks… and over 26,000 replied to say that they do. One particularly erudite respondent highlighted how small seats lead to safety risks not just in a full evacuation situation, but because of the way they make passengers feel, saying this:
“Much of the acting out by airline passengers is at least in part attributable to the severe overcrowding on airplanes. When people are so crowded that they cannot comfortably move without bumping or annoying someone else, they get tense and angry… No one except airline shareholders likes this situation.”
Anonymous FFA Survey Respondent
Other submissions pointed to hip or knee injuries that can potentially be caused by insufficient space between seats, while others referenced how height and weight play a role in putting passengers at risk. Lawmakers’ proposed solution is the Emergency Vacating of Aircraft Cabin (EVAC) Act, which is currently being discussed in Congress. The EVAC Act urges the FAA to consider real-life conditions and update seating standards to better ensure the safety of passengers in emergencies.
Current FAA standards state that all travellers must be able to evacuate a plane within 90 seconds, should an emergency require them to do so. However, the bill’s authors argue that the tests conducted to set this guideline only involved adults under the age of 60 and the tests were conducted in small groups, completely neglecting to consider that many planes carry over 200 passengers at a time.
The FAA has said that it is reviewing the comments received regarding seat size and spacing but was quick to mention a 2020 report from the Emergency Evacuation Standards Aviation Rulemaking Committee that examined nearly three-hundred airline evacuation events over the past decade before determining that safety levels were “very high” overall.
Once again, the airline industry is facing a standoff between what shareholders and customers want. While I understand that airline management is always keen to keep their shareholders on side so that the airline continues to have solid financial backing for expansion, I would always advise them to err on the side of customer satisfaction for one very simple reason: if you don’t have any customers, there won’t be any airline left to expand… and that certainly won’t leave you with happy shareholders.
We know all too well that it can take a while for lawmakers to hash these things out, often taking up a great deal of taxpayer’s time and money to do so… but if it keeps so-called “gasflighting” contained to the realm of dystopic nightmare, rather than an all-to-real reality, then that’s fine by me.